Is the MCU in danger? Die-hard Marvel fans may be growing concerned that Marvel movies no longer have the captivating plot lines and effects that keep fans coming back specifically with Thor: Love and Thunder. 

Thor: Love and Thunder was released on September 8, 2022 to Disney+. In the past month, Marvel fans at NAI who didn’t get the chance to watch it in the theater have streamed it and formed some unenthusiastic opinions about it.

The movie entices the audience from the start by beginning with a father, Gorr, losing his daughter to starvation. He hears a voice call out to him and thinks his god is saving him. Quite on the contrary, he realizes his god is there to mock him and views him as easily replaceable.

Gorr ends up realizing that a god-killing sword was actually calling him and makes a vow to kill all gods. The rest of the plot features  Thor trying to defeat Gorr, protect the gods, and save the children Gorr held hostage.

The intriguing introduction seems as though it would have set the stage for the rest of the film. However, there were some factors of Thor: Love and Thunder that made it a bit underwhelming.

For example, some fans thought that the movie should have had more humor when compared to other movies like Thor: Ragnarok. “The last Thor movie was funny so I was kind of expecting it to be a little funnier,” says Addison Shepard. 

Some, however, said it was, “too comedic,” but made, “too many stupid jokes,” says Colleen Pattison. 

Some fans were also confused about how some aspects of the movie didn’t make sense.  For example, one student thought that it didn’t make sense that Valkyrie had no problem wielding Zeus’ lightning bolt. Zeus is supposedly the most powerful god so, “that was kind of odd,” because his lightning shouldn’t have been accessible to anyone, says Ella Mensch. It actually demeans the lightning bolt so it “didn’t really seem that special,” Mensch adds. 

Another factor that contributed to the movie’s problems was that, “the pacing was so weird and it felt like a Disney channel original movie rather than a marvel movie ….. one of the newer bad ones,” says Shepard.

Some Marvel fans were specifically displeased with the character development of Thor. Thor was very “dumbed down,” says Jackson Frazer. It was unfortunate because, “Thor seemed like a very dynamic character in Endgame and they kind of just dumbed him down,” Frazer adds. 

Thor wasn’t the only character fans were upset about. Some didn’t find Gorr’s character very interesting and even said that Marvel “wasted Christian Bale,” says Frazer.

Additionally, many students at NAI found that they were displeased about many missed opportunities in the film. For example, some believe that Jane dying was a missed opportunity for her to become “a main character,” says Shepard.

 Furthermore, there were also missed opportunities for elongating interesting moments that captured the viewer’s attention. “They could have focused more on the place with all the gods because that was really interesting,” says Shepard.

Although this Marvel movie didn’t seem as though it met up to the standard that many marvel fans expect, some fans think that the movie was done “halfway” says Shepard, because Marvel was working on so many projects that it didn’t put in enough effort to bring the movie to its full potential. “I like marvel so much and don’t want to believe that they are losing their magic touch,” says Shepard. 

Overall, even though Marvel fans found Thor: Love and Thunder to be poorly done, concern for the safety of the MCU is still yet to be decided as fans await the arrival of new Marvel projects to shape their opinions on the future of Marvel.